Guest editorial: Gender and social entrepreneurship: building cumulative knowledge

Abstract

Women’s participation in social entrepreneurship is significant and the potential of social entrepreneurship to empower women is increasingly recognised (e.g. Cherrier et al., 2017; Dimitriadis et al., 2017; Haugh and Talwar, 2016; Hechavarría et al., 2017). However, despite a fast-developing and maturing literature on social entrepreneurship (Teasdale et al., 2023), scholarship on the gender–social entrepreneurship nexus remains sparse. Little is known about how gendered social entrepreneurship catalyses social change in varied contexts. The outcomes of women’s involvement and the processes by which they impact social ventures remain under-researched and under-theorised (Garcia-Lomas and Gabaldon, 2023). Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the scope for the social entrepreneurship sector to address social challenges at the local, national and global levels (Bacq and Lumpkin, 2021). Yet little is known about the gender dimensions of these responses. Going forward into the post-COVID-19 pandemic era, together with the need for heightened action to achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is both vital and timely to seek new understanding on the gender dimensions of social entrepreneurship. Thus, in this Special Issue (SI), we sought to enhance the understanding of the intersection between gender and social entrepreneurship, draw attention to implications for practice and reflect on a forward research agenda.